Mogador

Mogador, or SUEIRA, a seaport 130 miles WSW. of the city of Morocco. Pop. about 19,000, of whom 8000 are Jews and 200 Europeans. It stands on a rocky promontory opposite a small island, the channel between which forms the somewhat indifferent harbour. It is the best built and most modern town in the empire, having been laid out in 1760 by Cornut, a French engineer. On its landward side the place is surrounded by drifting sandhills, but the climate is salubrious, dry, and temperate. In the Kasbah or Castle, extended in 1865 by the 'New Kasbah,' live the governor and other Moorish officials, nearly all the Christians, the consular corps, and a number of protected Jews: here also are the government offices. The Medinah is exclusively a Moorish quarter, while the Mellah is allotted to the sorely oppressed Hebrews. Mogador is the seat of a considerable trade with the interior, and next to Tangier is of all the Moroccan ports the one frequented by most shipping. Caravans reach it from Timbuktu, and it is the outlet not only for the cities of Morocco and Demnat, but for the whole of the Sûs country. It exports almonds, olive-oil, wool, goat-skins, hair, gum-arabic, beans, lemons (citrons), &c. Commerce is mainly in the Jews' hands. The chief imports are woollens, cottons, glass, candles, tin and copper sheets, and hardware generally. Its manufactures are brass trays, daggers, furniture of ârâr wood, woollen cloth, &c. The total imports are on an average worth about £197,000, and the exports £175,000 per annum, of which fully three-fourths are sent from or taken to Great Britain. See Brown's edition of Pellow's Adventures (1890).